I honestly have to question how hard board games are, that are a combination of luck and skill. Certainly a skill game like chess is difficult, but after learning to play it well, you have a really good chance to win most of the time, or atleast not to lose. In games of luck and skill (backgammon and risk, are really cool) it can be harder to win as consistently as you could in chess, simply because 50% of the time, things aren't going to work in your favor and there aren't really any draws, if played out.

the hardest game is lottery.Nobody,no machine in history or alive has ever found any rule in it to play against the nature.

Depending upon the payoff, you could play many set of numbers and greatly increase your odds, for what results in a much smaller prize, but you could get lucky and do this several times in a row and then stop. Poker is a better option though. Men are far easier to exploit than nature.

How many board games have strict time controls? I can't think of any off hand. Playing a fast game of chess, say 3-5-10 minute blitz, keeping track of 64 squares and pieces that move in different ways, it's crazy hard not to lose to a tactic!

How many board games have strict time controls? I can't think of any off hand. Playing a fast game of chess, say 3-5-10 minute blitz, keeping track of 64 squares and pieces that move in different ways, it's crazy hard not to lose to a tactic!

Scattergories is a tough time controlled game. It has some elements of luck and a good bit of skill too. It is a cool game.

Chess is far more intricate and difficult to master. I picked up on how to play go relatively well in a short time. For me there is no comparison and no way chess is second. I'd pick tic tac toe before go, simply because it is so hard to win.

Chess is far more intricate and difficult to master. I picked up on how to play go relatively well in a short time. For me there is no comparison and no way chess is second. I'd pick tic tac toe before go, simply because it is so hard to win.

There are different ways of measuring difficulty. Other than how often you win (I don't think many people consider the lottery hard to play) you could measure it by the capacity the game has for error. For example you can't play the lottery incorrectly... there's no wrong way to buy ticket(s). Similarly it's easy to make no errors in tic-tac-toe.

In games of chance, it may be easier to lose, but a decision based on limited information can be measurably good and still lead to a negative result. The result and the quality of the decision are separate, and so the skill and the result are separate.

But then you could easily imagine an unnecessarily complicated game that would be impossible to play well at all. Say a board with 10^100 squares and 10^99 different types of pieces, add other dimensions and lots of rules etc. So capacity for error is not a useful metric either.

So maybe a better measure of difficulty would be, in a practical sense, the difference between the extremes of how well and how poorly we can expect decisions/plays to be made in the game. Games that are commonly held as difficult, like chess or golf, would be considered difficult under this definition.

I think the reason it becomes diffucult is when we are faced with an even opponent. Or someone whos play differs from ours. When every tactic and combination is neutralized and every game bores down to the endgame. I met alot of them in 15 min games.